


A Radiant

by sp8ce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Cultural Differences, Dissociation, F/F, Past Abuse, Power Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 15:07:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19211953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp8ce/pseuds/sp8ce
Summary: You thought you’d feel triumphant, exultant at your achievement, at getting her of all people to snap like you knew she would because she is not as passive as she comes across. You thought it’d make you mean something, if you were the one to get under her skin like no one else.You thought a lot of things, perhaps, but the sound of silence and the wind with the grey and green turns your head to a cloud. You just feel betrayed.





	A Radiant

When her hand cracks across your face, the sound echoing into the damp forest, you expect to feel something like vindication. But instead you glare at her, her wild black hair and red markings across her cheeks, eyes  _ angry _ as much as they are vibrant, and you bristle. Your hands are shaking. You don’t know how to put up your front.

You thought you’d feel triumphant, exultant at your achievement, at getting  _ her _ of all people to snap like you knew she would because she is not as passive as she comes across. You thought it’d make you mean something, if you were the one to get under her skin like no one else.

You thought a lot of things, perhaps, but the sound of silence and the wind with the grey and green turns your head to a cloud. You just feel betrayed.

_ It really is all your fault. _

There’s a rustle to your left, a squirrel in a tree, and she reacts before you can, with your foggy head and the growing dark antipathy inside your chest. She’s always good at this part, perhaps yes, because she’s been trained her whole life. How does she make you simultaneously feel so wild and weak? Her shot is near perfect, and she glances at you without a word, still terse and upset, teeth obviously tight together inside her closed frown, squinting at you like she can’t exactly see you right. When she comes back, still without a hint of softness left on her face, you are humiliated. You didn’t want her to see you  _ break _ .

You should punch her in the face, your should scream at her, or maybe kiss her angrily, pull her hair or bite her neck. You should literally do anything but what you have done, which is freeze. 

You feel guilty about what you said. You feel guilty for the way you goaded her and goaded her like you always do, but how fragile the air between the two of you must have been with the way she’d put her hand on your thigh last night, staring at your while you played with her hair, then how she rested her head on your leg and looked up at your with eyes that radiated like the sun, not that you see it much here with the oppressive haze of drizzly days.

You just want to mean something to her. She’s all you have. And you’re different than anyone else she’s ever met, and you know she doesn’t like you for it. You arrived at their hamlet all dehydration and shakes, with arrogance and entitlement to cover anything you ever felt inside. She thinks your selfish, but that’s a  _ bad thing  _ here. She thinks you’re cruel, but that’s  _ wrong _ ; she thinks you’re abrasive and everything you do--no matter where in the world you end up--is the epitome of wrong human behaviour.

You guess that makes sense. Why should you blame your society for how you were always so weak? Isn’t the pith of humanity what you’re failing? You’re rotten to the core, no matter where you run. 

But what can you do about that? You’re different than her. Your eyes are stormy and dark, but they’re blue unlike her dark amber, and her skin is darker than yours, which makes you look ghostly and sick in the dusk. But she’s also kind. She’s never once attacked you out of anger. She’s never even been violent with you. Until now.

How can you mean so much to her? How can you become something she refuses to lose? You’re sure she only lets you stick around because she’s different than you, she’s better, she’s kind, she’s altruistic. At your core, you see these things for what they are: what you aspire to be. At your core, her culture is something you envy. You wish you grew up like she did. But you didn’t. There was no harmony. And it was totally okay for everything that happened to you to happen to you. It was all your fault. 

You’re an anomaly, and doesn’t uniqueness mean you can be the best? If you can take the traits that make you seem so horrid, and light a fire in her heart regardless, then who could ever match you? No matter how temporary, the memory of you would be incomparable. You want to leave that mark on her. 

You knew she could never love you. You knew you were barely friends. Most of the time you’re in competition, her being the best at everything she does, but unfamiliar with the techniques you use. And when you fought, you both felt like you were fighting dirty. You were first scared she wouldn’t like that, given all she is, but she did, and it was the opening you were looking for.

You want to be her greatest competitor. You want to be her greatest nuisance, her greatest adversary, a black hole in her mind. You want her to hate you so much she won’t let you go because you are something so real in her mind, so how could she? You want to enamour her brain, and have each other send each other to new heights neither of you can reach alone. 

And isn’t that almost a kind of love in itself?

But the world feels weird and dreamy, and you feel like the pressure in your head’s going to break.  _ Is this fear _ ? It’s like when you shut down except different, it’s like when you panic except more to the left, and maybe she drugged you or something.

This isn’t what you wanted, you realise desperately. You felt so safe with her.  _ You felt so safe with her _ .

“What? Are we not going to go?” she says frustrated, and even her tone turns your body to stone. “Or do you need to let me know more just how much of an abomination I am?”  _ This is your weakness, this is your w e a k n e s s. _ Is she asking you to fight you? It isn’t  _ punishment _ if you fight back. Everyone eventually learns. That’s why it was so much worse for you. You took it out on everyone except who you should, and then you  _ ran _ .

You truly thought there’d been no escape because you were too weak to live in this world, are you not? Are you not made of sensitivities and putrid  _ remorse _ . You simply were not strong enough. It disappeared, in time, in the years. You just couldn’t keep going the way you were through adolescence. You broke, and you thought that life was inescapable because isn’t that what you were, but broken? But you ran, anyways, you ran for your life, you ran away from everything that you know and showed up sick and exhausted a couple weeks later, to people who spoke in strange ways you could barely make out. But you were right. There’s no escape. You can’t fight back. You’re frozen. What a sad little broken weakling you are.

She raises her hand to brush her hair out of her face, and you flinch.  _ Fuck _ . Now you’re going to be hurting for sure. How dare you  _ flinch _ .

“I’ll find my own way back,” you say, and you mean it to sound harsh and unforgiving, but your voice shakes, and you realise you feel like you’re about to cry. She looks confused, she knows these woods far better than you, but she also knows that for all your inabilities, navigation is not your weak suit. 

“Whatever,” she says, but it sounds less angry, more open, and you almost regret the way you turn angrily and storm off, kicking the underbrush the way you know she hates. You don’t look back to see if she’s even watching you because you’re loud enough she can hear you, and you know you’re vaguely going in the wrong direction, but you’ll get back to her house, eventually.

It gets darker quicker than you think it would. Dusk always descends like a warm blanket of bliss, heightening your senses with the power of the change of day to night, then suffocates you in fear when the light seeps out of the sky faster than your feet can move and all the trees start looking more ominous than they probably actually are. It’s practically pitch dark by the time you get back. You know she probably got back a while before you did, because she’s not one to brood like you.

She’s waiting inside, some meat already sitting in the middle of the room cooked. You sleep on opposite sides of the circular room and have lived here for a couple of months now, ever since she moved out of her grandmother’s due to a new child (and you) making it very crowded. She’s fiercely independent, and enjoys the added responsibility, you think. You’re way more terrified she’ll kick you out than attack you again, as you sit down on the ground across from her, and grab some meat. 

“You can’t speak to me like that,” she finally says, breaking the silence. She gives you a smile, afterwards, though, proving her inherent charisma and shine. A radiant, she is.

“Did I finally strike a nerve, miss Megido?” you ask. You’re scared you’re going to lose control of your body, like you first did when you arrived here and her mother always seemed so angry. You hadn’t known how to handle it, and it took you so long to understand the way she words things differently, the way she frets, the way she expresses emotions. But at first, there were times when you would freeze so badly you couldn’t move your body. Aradia was so intuitive with you, though. She knew how to help you and hurt you.

“ _ Vriska _ ,” she hisses, angry now. It’s a fight again, right?  _ You feel betrayed.  _

“So you’re allowed to speak me to like  _ that _ , but I’m not allowed to return the favour? Is that how it is here? You’re allowed to do  _ whatever... _ you want as long as it’s within the guidelines of your own culture? But the second  _ I _ prod at your  _ hypocrisy _ ...” you know you’re in the wrong, you know you’re in the wrong...

“So you meant everything you said then?” she says, and she just sounds  _ sad now; _ she’s turning in on herself. “Death upon you, Serket.”

“Aradia...” you start. You can’t lose her. She’s everything you have. And you didn’t mean a word of it, anyways. It was the one thing that  _ didn’t _ matter where you are from, it just meant you were more masculine. “I’m sorry, okay,” you say, and fuck, she  _ owns _ you doesn’t she? Maybe you’ll light her home on fire in the night and disappear again. Or maybe you’ll just run away without any drama, just disappear into the night like you never arrived and find some new people to take you in. No, maybe you’ll try to survive in the dark woods alone. But you know you won’t do any of that. You know you can’t because  _ you want to be here _ . But you feel so betrayed. It’s all your fault. You ruined everything. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t think it’s true at all. I mean you’re just a great hunter, right? Maybe it’s connected to that? And you’ve got such balance, with your music, maybe you’re just well balanced, there’s nothing wrong, I promise...”

“I know there’s nothing wrong with me,” she says, and she sighs deeply, her eyes aflame with the small light in the center of the room. “And you don’t either then?”

Is she giving you a chance to take it all back? Or is just her chance to grind you in with the heel of her boot, crush you until you’re nothing whatsoever. You know you should  _ fight _ . 

“I don’t,” you concede.

Does that mean everything she said about you was personal?  _ How dare a hand like yours have even touched my hair _ .

You used to be so harsh. How can she rip your entire being away from you so easily? You just want to hide and cry.

“I’m sorry,” you add again. She has all the power over you. You need her to forgive you.

“I forgive you,” she says. She doesn’t offer you an apology though. “Eat.”

You follow her orders like you were born to follow and not to lead. And you know you’re rotten to the core. You know no matter where in humanity you turn, you will always be something to be hated. But it doesn’t change the fact you think that’s incongruent with who you are. You’re smarter than this. You’re more of a leader than this. You can mask your sensitivity and throw dramatism like a power. And if she met you when you were younger, you would have absolutely crushed her.

After you eat and before you go to sleep, she crosses the room, and pulls you into a hug. Her hands linger at your necks and rub a circle three times, like she’s trying to tell you something, and you realise now she has completely destroyed you. You would do anything for her kindness. And usually you trust that she wouldn’t take advantage of that.

But you also really thought you’d never be able to drive her to hit you, either.

The next day is tense, and you can’t help but flinch around her. She’s become something that isn’t safe. She’s become everything you thought every human was. You can’t think about anything but your own insecurities and fear. She moves her hand to pick up a knitting needle, and you recoil.

You’re always surprised when she doesn’t hit you for it.

But she doesn’t, and she doesn’t bring it up until two days later when she’s sitting so close to you, and she swivels her body around to sit in on your lap. She’s all hair in your face, and her legs on your legs, and she’s never been this brazen.

“I don’t want to apologise,” she says, and she presses her forehead against your.

“For what?” you ask.

“For hitting you. You were so cruel.”

“I know,” you say. “I deserved it.” The words taste like bile. But she already owns you, doesn’t she. She pulls her head back to look in your eyes. Has she had some paradigm shift? “You really ought to hit me more, Megido.”

“I will never hit you again,” she says, and she closes her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s... it’s alright,” you say, a little confused, though you feel more grounded, now, like she is really there in front of you, on your lap, and you want more than anything in the world for your head to be in between her legs. Let her smother you. The ultimate amount of grounding you can ever imagine.

But instead, she holds your face, both hands forcing you to look at her with a tender hold that feels so close to true affection. 

“Snap out of it, Vriska,” she says, and you’re not sure what she means, really, snap out of your passive daze she’s drowned you in? But she does something now you didn’t expect: she kisses you. And for all the ways she’s touched you, she’s never done this.

You kiss her back fervently, and she gently traces her hand across your cheek where her hand and smacked into. It’s slightly tender, you notice, but only because of the way she’s touching it. When she pulls away, you realise how badly you ache for her.

“Aradia...” you say, your voice soft. You realise belatedly that you’d do anything for her, and it’s not her lips that entranced you so. It was the fact she apologised.

“Is that not abominable?” she asks.

“Is my body not so disgusting you should never lay a hand upon it?” you say. She squints at you angrily. 

“You’re beautiful,” she says, and wow, that’s not what you expected. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow?”

“Alright,” you say, but you only because she said for you to. You lay down feelings really confused.

This isn’t hate. This isn’t a competition because she has  _ won _ . This is something that threatens to completely engulf you. You’re not sure if you’ll be able to make it out of this at all. 

You just hope so desperately that it will leave a mark on her, when she realises easy prey is easy to find. You hope you can mean at least something, even if you can no longer fight the way she makes your love grow like a radiant rapture.

**Author's Note:**

> ANOTHER?  
> Please let me know what you think...  
> I promise to stop writing these aravris one shots....


End file.
